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A wildly inventive and entertaining novel about a sci-fi writing group whose fictional universe and personal dramas begin to collide and collapse from the critically acclaimed author of the "timeless and original" (The New York Times) The Body Scout.
Perennially single, socially awkward, and drowning in debt, Michael Lincoln's life has turned out nothing like the intergalactic pulp heroes of his youth. But these are pedestrian concerns—he has a greater calling, and that is to preserve for all posterity the greatest series in the history of the written word: The Star Rot Chronicles. Written collectively by Michael's best (and perhaps only) friend Taras K. Castle and his misfit sci-fi writing group, the Orb 4, the stories follow Captain Baldwin and his fearless crew on their mind-bending adventures across the Metallic Realms, from solar whales swallowing suns at the edge of spacetime to interstellar love triangles. These masterpieces have gone tragically unpublished—until now.
But the most urgent story Michael must tell takes place in the more intimate (if no less dramatic) confines of literary Brooklyn. Behind the greatest multiverse ever created, there are the all-too-mortal people who wrote it. As Michael chronicles the personal melodramas of the Orb 4 as well as the funhouse reflections in their fiction, the line between real and unreal becomes dangerously thin, and the true reasons for the group's fallout begin to emerge. As he labors away in hiding, Michael has just one mission: to bring the Metallic Realms to the world. No matter the cost.
Metallic Realms is a genre-breaking ode to golden-age science fiction, friendship, creativity, and the power and perils of storytelling.
Michel spins a riveting tale of a sci-fi writing group and its obsessive hanger-on, Michael Lincoln...Michel has a knack for exploring the characters' complex relationships, as Michael's delusional view of himself and the world around him careens toward its breaking point while the Orb 4's stories bleed into the writers' real lives...This captivates." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Exciting and tragic and funny and bewildering and just plain wonderful." —Booklist
"One of the sharpest and cleverest minds when it comes to modern sci-fi, and his latest work, Metallic Realms, is further proof of that fact." —Polygon
"Filled with endless geeky goodness…A delightfully meta concept, executed to perfection." —The Speculative Shelf
"A brilliant, inventive satire of writers and super fans, even better for its obvious affection towards both. Lincoln Michel is one of the most surprising speculative writers working today, and this witty planet-hopping love letter to pulp science fiction is the most fun I've had reading all year." —Matt Bell, author of Appleseed
"A synapse-blasting paean to devotional geekdom and the fugue state of starving artistry, this spectacular postmodern funhouse brims with literary delight on every page. Lincoln Michel is our canniest, most gleeful genre-exploder, and Metallic Realms is a galactic achievement." —Henry Hoke, author of Open Throat
This information about Metallic Realms was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Lincoln Michel's previous books are the story collection Upright Beasts and the novel The Body Scout, which was named one of the 10 Best Science Fiction Books of 2021 by The New York Times and one of the 50 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time by Esquire. His writing has appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney's, Lightspeed, Granta, the New York Times, the Guardian, and elsewhere. He runs the popular literary newsletter Counter Craft and coedited the anthologies Tiny Crimes and Tiny Nightmares. He was born in Virginia and lives in Brooklyn. He can be found online at LincolnMichel.com.
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